Freelancefolder

How to Get Started with Twitter Lists

Posted November 3, 2009 in How-To, Social Media 26 Rockin' Comments »

Can you benefit from the new Twitter Lists feature?

If you’ve been using Twitter to search for jobs and make professional contacts, then Twitter’s new list feature can help you to better organize the tweets of those you follow. It can also help you find interesting groups of people to keep track of.

Over the past few weeks Twitter has been testing the new Lists feature with a portion of its users and, although it is still in Beta, last week they made Lists available to everyone.

In this article we’ll take a look at how Twitter Lists can help your freelance business and how you can get started using them right now.

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Get More Subscribers With An Email Subscription Box

Posted October 19, 2009 in How-To, Marketing 31 Rockin' Comments »

Many of us freelancers run blogs, and with good reason. Creating a blog is one of the best ways to prove your expertise, build a strong following, and get more clients. Making it easy for your readers to subscribe is a key factor in building this following and growing your blog, and it is a fact — not all of your readers know how to use RSS.

So are you missing out on potential subscribers without an email subscription box? Most definitely so.

If you are unsure what I mean by ‘email subscription box’, see the “Enter your email” field to the right? This allows users to enter their email and subscribe to your blog from every page of your website. They don’t have to click through to another page to subscribe, making it much easier for readers to subscribe.

You will find my subscribe box prominently on the top right of my site Just Creative Design (see screenshot above) and at the top of many other blogs. In this article, I will guide you through how to get an email subscription box for your own blog.

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How To Build The Ultimate Job Finding Dashboard with iGoogle

Posted October 7, 2009 in How-To, Marketing 85 Rockin' Comments »

Picture this: You wake up in the morning, grab your cup of coffee, and meander over to your computer. After checking your morning email and twitter accounts, you get started looking for some new work. You check a number of different job boards, look for keywords on a bunch of job-finding sites, and complete several twitter searches. After about hour or so of looking, you’ve got 5 or so potential leads. Not a bad start!

While 5 leads is pretty decent for an hour of searching — what if you could accomplish the same thing in 15 minutes? What about 5 minutes?

In this article we’re going to show you how to take that entire job search process and replace it with a single customized job finding page on iGoogle. We’ll aggregate all of the various job boards, grab feeds for different twitter searches, and create a single dashboard where you can look for jobs at a glance.

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10 Ways To Make Your Freelance Business Fail

Posted September 21, 2009 in Business, How-To 39 Rockin' Comments »

As I wade through the many blog posts and articles written about freelancing, I notice a very definite trend. While there are ample materials written for the freelancer who wants to succeed, there seems to be virtually nothing written for the freelancer who wants his or her freelance business to fail.

It seems a bit unfair, really. I can picture some poor freelancer miserably trapped in his or her success and desperately wanting to get out. Where can they turn to for advice?

Before today, resources for freelancers wanting to fail were scarce. Today, however, we’re going to fix that problem right here at FreelanceFolder.

If you’ve ever thought to yourself this business would be perfect if it weren’t for all of my clients, then this post is for you. We’ll give you a list of tactics that will drive those pesky clients away and quickly lead to your ultimate goal: freelancing failure.

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5 Easy Ways to Finish Your Day With A Bang

Posted September 17, 2009 in How-To, Productivity 22 Rockin' Comments »

Getting a lot of work done at the end of the day can be really tough — especially if it happens to be a Monday, Thursday, or Friday.

Time seems to slow down, motivation slowly seeps away, and I’d swear that work becomes exponentially more difficult. Something about late-afternoons just isn’t good for productivity.

With a few tricks, though, it’s possible to turn those sluggish afternoons into something altogether more productive. Not only that, if you can take an incredibly productive morning and then finish it off with a productive afternoon, you’ll be on track to hit life-changing levels of productivity.

With that in mind, here are 5 easy ways to finish your day with a bang:

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Social Media Basics For Freelancers

Posted September 16, 2009 in How-To, Marketing 33 Rockin' Comments »

As a freelancer you’ve probably heard a lot about social media. You’ve probably heard about a bunch of different social networking websites and, if you read FreelanceFolder a lot, you’ve probably also heard about a number of different tools we recommend for social media too.

The simple truth of the matter is that social media is a very powerful tool for freelancers. Some people have doubled, tripped, or even created their entire business using social media. But it isn’t all good news — social media has a number of downfalls as well.

For those of you who are new to using social media, or for anyone who wants to learn how to use it for freelancing, here is an overview of the social media basics for freelancers:

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What To Say To Your Low-Balling Clients

Posted September 3, 2009 in How-To, Managing Clients 60 Rockin' Comments »

Last week we posted an article about how vampire clients can suck the life from your business. In that post, I got an excellent question from one of our FreelanceFolder readers in the comments.

The reader frequently had to deal with clients who “low-balled” him on projects and he wondered how to deal with a client in that situation.

If you are new to freelancing or unfamiliar with the term, “low-balling,” refers to the practice of trying to get the lowest possible price for a project. Usually a low-balled price is well below the average market rate for a particular type of work.

In this post we’ll give you four answers you can use with a client who is trying to “low-ball” you for a particular project. We’ll also gives you some techniques to help you recognize low-ball schemes and avoid them.

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How To Get Your Clients to Take You Seriously

Posted August 31, 2009 in How-To, Managing Clients 25 Rockin' Comments »

Do your clients ignore what you say and disregard your advice? Do they decide things behind your back, and just assume you’ll follow along? Do they sometimes treat you as if you aren’t a professional at all?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you have a common case of clients not taking you seriously.

Getting clients to take you seriously can be a major issue for some freelancers. How to accomplish this goal often seems like a mystery, but getting your clients to treat you more like a professional is not as difficult as you may think.

In this post we’ll look at a few common ways to get your clients to treat you more like a professional.

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10 Tips for Becoming a Freelancing PowerHouse

Posted August 26, 2009 in Business, How-To 45 Rockin' Comments »

When it comes to freelancing, most people assume it’s all fun and games. The thing that many forget to realize is that when you are setting your own hours and being your own boss, responsibilities double. If you work from home, I am sure you know what I am talking about.

Working from home is great, and setting my own hours couldn’t be better. However, there was a point when it almost felt like it wasn’t worth it. Not anymore. I made some changes to the way I do things and since then it has been all fun and games (besides occasional work stress).

I have been working from home for a couple years and I really do enjoy being there for my family when they need me. In this post I’ve listed a few tips that will help you conquer the pitfalls of freelancing and turn you into a freelancing powerhouse.

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